Pirtle’s SBC Cyber Cafe

LIS 451 | Fall 2011

Key Information

Pirtle’s Admin Account Password: _________________

Wireless Internet Password: ______________________

Machines

Your machines are Dells that look a lot like this picture. They were donated by businesses and individuals and refurbished by our LIS451 class at the University of Illinois. They are generally 4-5 years old, but still perfectly good for the kinds of things you’ll generally be using them for in this cyber cafe. They have a CD drive at the top, a floppy disc drive in the middle, and you can open the light-grey panel that makes up most of the bottom half to access a USB port and a headphone jack. The power button is front and center. There are more USB ports on the back of the machine, but those are about the only things you should need to access back there unless something goes wrong.

NetworkYour machines are tied to one another and eventually to the internet by a local network we have built within the store. The network is laid out like this:

The network is made up of several parts: the Ethernet cables (which look like slightly larger versions of phone cords) running between the machines and the Ethernet outlets that line the walls of the space. There are switches, like the one pictured below,

located under the collaborative workspace in the back and the L-shaped table in the front. These switches tie the signals from the computers at those tables together so that they can be channeled into the available Ethernet outlets. A larger switch is located under the wall mounted patch panel

in the front of the space. The wall outlets connect, behind the wall, into the back of the patch panel and cables connected to its front and the larger switch carry signals from the site computers. The larger switch ties all the signals together and sends them to a router which acts as a gate between the shop and Cyber Café networks.

The line out from this connects to your AT&T-provided wired / wireless combo Gateway / Router:

As the name suggests, this device does a couple of different things. First, it directs traffic on the local network and between the local network and the outside world (routing). It can provide wireless access for laptops and other devices (all of your current machines are hard-wired, so this isn’t currently enabled, but could be in the future if you want to do so), and it also provides security which shields your machines from some of the dangers of the public internet. Finally, it acts as a DSL modem (the gateway part of the name) which is what ultimately provides access to the outside internet for all of the machines on your local network.

Starting Up and Shutting Down

User Accounts

When you start up a machine by pressing the power button as pictured in the example above, you’ll be presented with this screen:

It provides four options for user accounts we have set up for each machine.

GSLIS Admin

This account is reserved for our use when we visit to do maintenance on the machines. It is password protected, and we keep the password to ourselves to ensure that there is always one account on the machine that hasn’t been altered and can serve as a clean base from which to fix any problems with the other accounts.

Important: If you are a visitor from GSLIS working on these machines, please remember to follow the Steady State instructions for manual updates included in the Safety and Security Section.

Administrator

This is a general administrative account with the same password as the GSLIS admin account. It can be ignored.

Pirtle’s Admin

This is the account you should use if you wish to install new software (either from the internet or from a disc) or make major changes to the computer’s settings through the Control Panel or other management utilities. You should also be logged into this account the first time you connect any new hardware or peripherals other than minor things like USB sticks and headphones. We recommend that you set a

password on this account, and only give it out to employees and regular volunteers who help maintain the lab, and other very strongly trusted users.

Important: This account will have unrestricted access to all parts of the machine, but remember to disable Steady State’s disc protection (see Manual Updates with Steady State in the Software section below for instructions) before making changes. If this is not done any changes will be reversed at the end of the session.

SBC User

This is the account you should be logged into as much as possible for the everyday use of the machines. It has important restrictions which help prevent the machine from getting cluttered up with unused software or catching viruses. These restrictions are managed by a program called Steady State. When logged in to the user account, you can run existing programs, save files to a floppy disk or USB drive, and do most or all of what you’ll want to do in a normal computer session. While logged in as SBC Uer Steady State prevents you from installing new software, changing system settings, directly accessing important parts of the operating system and saving anything to the hard drive. We recommend that you leave this account without a password, making it as easy as possible for users to access.

Important: Because of Steady State’s disk protection it will be impossible for user’s to permanently save anything to the hard drive. That means that, to keep their data, users will require a thumb drive.

Shutdown

It is important to turn off the computers properly to prevent damage to MS Windows that can corrupt the files on the disk and even disable the machine entirely. To shut down the computer properly, click on the “Start” button at lower left, and then the “Turn Off Computer” button in the menu that pops up.

When you do this, the following menu will pop up.

And you can choose whichever option you want. “Stand by” will put the computer to sleep, which saves power but preserves your currently open programs and files. You can get out of Standby mode by moving the mouse or typing on the keyboard, which will wake up the computer and put you back at the user account screen from the beginning of this section. If you choose the account you were logged into when the computer went to sleep, you should get back everything you were working on before just as it was.

You can choose “Restart” if the computer has been acting up and you want to try re-starting to see if that will fix it, or if a software update or something else has happened that says it requires a system restart. Finally, “Turn Off” will power down the computer (this might take awhile as Windows shuts down all of the programs you have running, and if one of them is having problems, it might also ask you to force it to quit, which is fine to approve), and you will lose your current work if you haven’t saved it to the disk.

Your printer is a Lexmark T632 Black and White Laser Printer. It is connected to the machine behind the counter, but as long as that machine is on and connected to the network, you can also print from all of the other machines in the lab. The printer takes a black and white toner cartridge. One of these is already installed.

Printer

SoftwareWe’ve provided a full inventory of what is installed on each machine at the end of this manual, but here we’ll cover a few key highlights and also some info on how to use them. To get a list of shortcuts to all the programs on your computer, click on the “Start” button at lower-left, and then click on “All Programs.” A menu will pop up with a list similar to the one pictured at right.

Safety and SecurityViruses, malware, and privacy are always a concern in a public computer lab environment, but we think we have taken good precautions that should prevent the vast majority of problems in these areas.

1. There is a program installed called Steady State which restricts access to certain parts of the computer from the SBC User account. It also has a feature called “disk protection” that erases any changes to the system when any user logs off. This protects both the user’s privacy and system’s integrity. Only the administrator (Pirtle’s Admin and GSLIS Admin) accounts have the power to make changes to Steady State. This includes changes to disk protection, user restrictions, and windows updates. Steady State also allows administrators to change Steady State so that it saves system changes without completely disabling disk protection. Instructions for installing new programs and update existing ones are included at the end of this section. Steady State also includes an excellent help file, and, in addition we have provided Microsofts Steady State Handbook along in the folder with this manual.

2. Keeping Windows and all of your other software as up-to-date as possible is crucial to your systems security. Software updates mostly fix the bugs and vulnerabilities which hackers exploit with viruses and malware, so the more up to date you are, the less vulnerable you will be to these attacks.Fortunately, Steady State will update Windows automatically. Updates to other program should be checked for weekly on an administrator account. Important: before checking for updates while logged in to an administrator account, following the instructions below so that Steady State will allow changes.

3. Another important part of system security is the user account system described in the previous section. Running the machines as “Pirtle’s User” as much as possible will keep a whole lot of potential problems from ever having a chance to happen. Steady State blocks the user from access to the file system, so any malware downloaded during a user session will be rendered ineffective.

4. Even with Steady State erasing any changes, the system may still be vulnerable to some malware, however, so we’ve installed some anti-malware software that will be capable of detecting anything that makes it through our already strong defenses. Panda Cloud Antivirus is free, doesn’t require updates since it’s constantly connected to an antivirus database online, and provides active protection against viruses (meaning it should catch them as they try to infect you and actively prevent it from happening, instead of waiting for a scan to find and get rid of them.) It’s still a good idea to run a scan once in awhile though, just in case something has slipped through that it didn’t recognize at the time. Panda also comes with an add-on called Panda Immunize, which scans any USB drives for malware.

Ad-Aware SE is also included to try to keep a handle on spyware, adware, and other legal malware, that, while not a virus, can still have a negative effect on system performance or collect user information.

Privacy

With lots of different people using the machines, there are bound to be worries about people potentially entering personal information while surfing the web that the next person to use the computer could then see and take advantage of. Steady State prevents privacy violations of this type by causing any changes made to the computer to be undone when the user logs off. Once you log off of your account, everything you’ve just done disappears without a trace. Only the administrator can save changes as described above. Users who want to save files will need to use a USB drive, floppy disc, or dvd-rom . It may be a good idea to display signs that inform the users that their data will be lost at logout.

Important

This system will take a little bit of regular maintenance from an administrator, because SteadyState cannot automatically update Panda Cloud Anti-Virus, Ad-Aware. You may want to make signs to the effect that any file that people intentionally save to the computer (as opposed to their USB drive or online email account or what have you) is likely to be seen by others.

Manual Updates with Steady State

Here are the instructions for performing updates on

1. Log on as a Windows SteadyState administrator.

2. In the Windows Steady State main dialog box, under Computer Settings, click Protect the Hard Disk.

3. Select Retain all changes permanently.

4. Install the software updates you want on the shared computer. Refer to the software

documentation for more information on the updates you want to install.

5. After updates are installed manually, restart the shared computer.

6. For increased security on your shared computer, after manual software updates have been

installed, select Remove all changes at restart in the Protect the Hard Disk dialog box so that

additional changes to the shared computer will not be saved.

Follow these steps each time you need to manually update your software and antivirus programs.

Firefox

The most important piece of software on these machines, or at least the one you’ll likely be spending the most time with, is your web browser. This is the program you use to access the internet and browse web pages. We have decided to go with Mozilla Firefox as the primary browser on these machines, for a couple of reasons. First, it’s more secure and much less vulnerable to viruses and spyware popup windows and other similar problems.

Secondly, it is easy to customize in a lot of interesting ways, and we’ve taken full advantage of this for your lab. For example, it allows you very good control over security and privacy settings.

We’ve also added lots of custom bookmarks to Firefox, which link to small business and entrepreneurship resources, computer tutorials for the other software installed on these machines and for popular online services like Gmail and Google Docs, and human services and educational resources likely to be of interest to the residents of the nearby transitional housing facility.

Finally, at the top right of the Firefox window there is a customizable search box that you can use to easily search a variety of different resources. Just click on the icon at the left of the search box to choose which source to search, then type things in the box and hit “enter” to do your search.

Internet Explorer is also available via the Start Menu for web surfing if you prefer it.

Open Office and relatedThe machines are equipped with an office suite called Open Office. Open Office has all of the equivalent functions and programs of MS Office and can work fine with most files made in MS Office as well. You can find some tutorials for it in the Firefox bookmarks.

The machines also have a publishing program called Scribus which can be used to create and edit newsletters, flyers, and other types of publications.

Business SoftwareBusiness management and accounting software that is both a) free and b) relatively straightforward and simple to use proved rather difficult to find. We settled on GnuCash, which is a free and open source accounting and bookkeeping suite, similar to Quicken or Quickbooks. It comes with a comprehensive help tutorial that covers not only how to use the program but accounting basics as well.

Web DesignThe programs list includes a program called KompoZer, which can be used to edit website. Tutorials for website creation and design can be found in the Firefox bookmarks. To create a site you need space on the web to “host” it. Some of our bookmarks are sites, like Google sites, where websites can be created for free. Many of these sites include their own tools for creation, and are perfect for creating small sites, so you may not even need KompoZer.

Educational Games for ChildrenIn the absence of many good choices for the small business audience, we concentrated on children likely to be staying in the nearby transitional housing facility. We found and installed a variety of educational games for young children, which should both be entertaining and help inculcate key literacies in basic reading and math.

Gcompris is a suite of free educational software for children aged 2 to 10. The games and activities teach basic computer literacy, numeracy, science, geography, mathematics, and reading. It also has versions of common games like Chess, Checkers, Sudoku, Memory, and Connect 4.

Nessy Tales is a series of animated stories that teach reading skills, designed for children ages 5-12.

Tux of Math Command emulates the popular classic arcade game Missile Command, but adds the element of solving basic math problems to the gameplay. It is one of multiple free Tux educational games we have installed, all of which are educationally-adapted versions of various classic computer, arcade, and board games.

Other Things to be Aware of

First up, the thing with the clock and the tiny icons at the extreme lower-right of the screen is called the System Tray, and that’s where updates and alerts often appear. From R to L, you’ve got the clock, the icon for Panda Immunize, the icon for Panda Cloud Antivirus, the icon for ejecting USB drives (of which, more below), the volume control, the network connection indicator, and the icon for Ad-Aware. If any of the various antivirus / anti-malware programs ever finds anything bad, an alert will likely pop up there at bottom-right. Windows updates also show up there, usually in the form of a yellow exclamation-point thing. If that keeps popping up, you may have to click it to finish out an update.

Also note the Recycle Bin, which you should probably empty anytime that you notice that something is in there, just to avoid buildup over time and protect privacy.

Proper Handling of USB DrivesIn a public computer lab, it’s likely that many people will end up using inexpensive USB thumbdrives to save their work and take it with them. We’ve included some instructions for properly ejecting those before you unplug them. If you fail to do this, you can sometimes lose the files you have just saved.

When you plug in a USB drive, a green-colored icon should appear in the taskbar at lower right, like this:

When you’re ready to unplug the drive, right-click on that icon and select “Safely Remove Hardware”, as in the graphic below:

Choose your drive, and click ok. You should then get an indication that it’s now safe to unplug.

TroubleshootingTroubleshooting is far too vast a topic to really cover in the space we have here, but what we will do is cover a couple of special cases that would make it difficult or impossible for you to make use of the resources we have provided in the Firefox bookmarks or elsewhere online.

The first such case is obviously the loss of your internet connection.

Internet Connection Troubleshooting

If the internet isn’t working on the machine you are on here are some things you can try to get it back up and running.

1. The first step would be to try another machine, to see if the problem is isolated to just the first machine or if it’s with the whole network.

2. If the internet works on the other machines, the first and easiest thing to do is probably to restart the non-working machine and see if that fixes it.

3. If that doesn’t work, then right-click on the network indicator icon in the System Tray at the lower right part of the screen.

Choosing “status” will give you some information about your connection, and choosing “repair” will make your machine drop its current connection and attempt to acquire a new one. Going through this process and/or a reboot will probably fix 75% of connectivity problems that are isolated to just one machine.

4. If those steps don’t work, then the next thing to try is to check to make sure the Ethernet cable (which looks like a slightly larger version of a phone cable, and in your lab is probably a bright color like orange, red, or blue) both at the back of the computer and at the switch or router is properly plugged in. Unplug and reseat the cable at both ends of the connection, check to make sure the corresponding lamps are lit on the switch and the Ethernet adapter you have just plugged into, and then run through the reboot and repair processes above again.

5. If it still isn’t fixed after that, it’s probably time to call in professional help.

Network Troubleshooting

If, on the other hand, your connectivity problems extend to multiple machines and a simple reboot or connection repair doesn’t restore the internet, then that calls for some troubleshooting at the network level.

1. The pieces of network hardware you have (switch, AT&T router/DSL gateway) are like small specialized computers, and they can crash or freeze up just like regular computers, so the first and best bet is to shut them all down and restart them.

2. This is usually accomplished by simply unplugging them from the wall (or unplugging the AC adapter from the back of the box), waiting a few seconds, and then plugging back in.

3. If you’re unplugging and re-plugging everything, make sure to power the AT&T router / gateway back up first, as you have to re-establish a connection with the outside internet first before any of the rest of the network can really do anything about distributing it to the other machines.

4. If rebooting or powering down and then powering back up the networking hardware doesn’t fix your problems, the only really viable next step is to check to make sure everything is plugged in snugly, as above. Every port should have a corresponding light on the device, and that light should be green if something is plugged into it and everything is working properly. In general, green blinking or solid-color lights = good, and no lights or red lights are bad. If you’re getting

red or no lights on the AT&T router/gateway (which is your lifeline to the internet) even after restarting it, it’s time to call AT&T, as the problem is likely on their end.

Safe mode, scandisk, and system restoreFinally, here is are some things to try if the computer hangs or freezes while booting up or you otherwise can’t get Windows to load even though the computer appears to be powering on fine. You can also try this stuff to fix persistent slowness or crashes, provided that the problem is still fairly new. Problems like this can happen after a failed software update, a power outage, an improper shutdown of the machine, or sometimes just randomly. Luckily, Windows offers some fairly simple solutions to these sorts of issues in the form of Safe Mode, Scandisk, and System Restore.

Starting the Computer in Safe ModeTo start the computer in Safe Mode, press and hold the “F8” key when you turn on the machine. Doing that should eventually give you a screen like this:

Choose “safe mode”, and let the machine finish booting up. Safe Mode loads a stripped-down version of Windows, which will hopefully get around the problems you are having enough to let you try one of the two following solutions.

ScandiskIf your computer has not been shut down properly, or you’ve had a power outage or power surge or some other similar problem, files that are vital to your system can be corrupted and prevent Windows from starting up or cause Windows to crash or slow down to a crawl. One way to try to repair this is to run Scandisk.

To get to Scandisk, open “My Computer,” and then right-click on your hard drive Local Drive(C:) and choose “properties.”

That will cause the following menu to pop up:

Pick the “Tools” tab, which will give you the three options shown. The “error checking” option is the one you want, and it will pop up the box in the foreground of the screenshot above. Check both boxes as shown and click “Start.” The machine will tell you that it has to restart to do the scan. Agree to this, and let it run through the entire process until it has rebooted back to the Login screen again. If the problem was something that Scandisk can fix, this will have fixed it.

If it wasn’t and the machine is still misbehaving, it’s time to try a System Restore. To do this, start up in Safe Mode as before, and then follow the instructions below (which we have copied from a Microsoft Tutorial.)

Using System RestoreSystem Restore is a feature of Microsoft Windows XP that automatically saves a copy of important system settings and files so that you can easily restore those settings if something goes wrong. System Restore creates a backup copy every day and every time you install new hardware or software.

Note: System Restore returns system settings and system files to the state they were in on an earlier date. System Restore doesn't recover personal files or e-mail messages. This is a good thing if you only want to roll back your computer settings and not all the work you did since you made the hardware or software change. However, if you want to be sure you can recover personal files in the event of a catastrophic system failure, be sure to back up your files.

How to restore system settings to an earlier dateYou should use System Restore only after you have tried other troubleshooting techniques to fix the problem you may be having with a hardware or software program. System Restore simply returns your system to the way it was before you installed the hardware or software—it doesn't fix your hardware or software problem. Once you've restored your system, you'll have to start the troubleshooting process again with the new software or hardware

To use System Restore

1.

Click Start, point to Accessories, point to System Tools, and then click System Restore.

2.. The System Restore Wizard opens. On the Welcome to System Restore page, make sure Restore my computer to an earlier time is selected, and then click Next.

3.. On the Select a Restore Point page, click the date on the calendar that you want to restore your computer to. Choose the last date when everything was working properly—before you made configuration changes, installed new software, or added new hardware.

Then, click Next

4.. On the Confirm Restore Point Selection page, click Next

5.The System Restore Wizard shuts down Windows XP and restores your settings. Then, it restarts Windows XP and displays the Restoration Complete message. Click OK.

the Restoration Complete message. Click OK.

Now that you have restored your system settings to an earlier state, test your computer to determine whether the problem was resolved. If your system is working fine now, you’re done

Inventory

Computers

Machine name Machine type hard drive Ram processor speed

Asmodeus Dell desktop p4 40GB 1 gb 3.2GHzPoisonteeth Dell desktop p4 40GB 1 gb 2.8GHzBasil Dell desktop p4 40GB 1 gb 3.2GHzStag Dell desktop p4 40GB 1 gb 3.2GHzJess Dell desktop p4 40GB 1 gb 3.6GHzSquirrel Dell desktop p4 40GB 1 gb 3.2GHzMethuselah Dell desktop p4 40GB 1 gb 3.2GHzCornflower Dell desktop p4 38GB 1 gb 3.2GHzMousethief Dell desktop p4 40GB 1 gb 3.2GHzGonff Dell desktop p4 40GB 1 gb 3.2GHzFortunata Dell desktop p4 40GB 1 gb 3.6GHzGreeneyes Dell desktop p4 40GB 2.5GB 3.2GHz

Software: Open Office, Scribus(MS Publisher equivalent), Gnucash, Turbocash, Ad Aware, Panda Cloud, Panda Security, Firefox(+ custom profile with bookmarks and search engines), Pidgin, Peazip, Putty, WinSCP, Quicktime, Real Player, Adobe Reader, Adobe Flash/Shockwave, VLC Media Player, Google Earth, Tux Typing, Tux Math Command, Gcompris, NessyTales.